Inner Demons
by StevenQ
Summary: While leaving Oz in his balloon, the Wizard chats to his guilty conscience, who happens to look a lot like Elphaba.


**Title:** Inner Demons  
**Disclaimer:** Wicked belongs to Universal Studios, and the Gregory Maguire.

**Inner Demons**

Oz was a beautiful land when seen from air. From the majesty of the Emerald city, to the rough and bleak windswept plains and mountains of the Vinkus, to the gentle hills and endless green fields of Gillikin. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, recently deposed monarch of all that he could survey, was in no mood to appreciate the beauty of the country he had until mere hours ago called home. In fact, he wasn't in a state to appreciate anything at the moment. He sat, slumped in the wide, low basket under the balloon that had taken him to Oz. Scattered in the basket with him were several large bottles of alcohol. Some were empty, some weren't. The Wizard himself was quite thoroughly drunk, a vain attempt to drown his sorrows about what he had learnt from Glinda about Elphaba, how deeply it had wounded him to know where his pride and arrogance had taken him. 

"Pathetic," a voice sneered at him. He ignored it, for he had been unable to drown out the voices since he had taken flight. He didn't know how the balloon worked, so he had no need to stand in the basket, and it was much easier to down the Gillikinese alcohol he had brought along. It was better, he supposed that Dorothy had left the balloon before it took flight, his grief was private. And if the Gillikenese were an overly officious bunch of fools in his view, they knew how to make serious moonshine.

"Is this what the Wonderful Wizard of Oz has come to?" the voice asked again, and it managed to penetrate the haze of alcohol that had settled in his brain. He squinted his eyes, trying to find the source of it, and finally spotted something floating maybe a few feet off his balloon. His throat constricted as he took in the pale green form, long brown hair streaming behind her that was perched on a broom and had a profoundly disapproving look on her face.

"Go away," he slurred, trying to lift his bottle to throw it at her. He failed, and the empty bottle rolled around the basket. "You aren't real anyways."

"Oh no?" she asked mockingly. "Then what am I Wizard?"

Angered by the tone in which this specter of the past spoke to him, he lurched to his knees, using the rim of the basket to steady him. Eyes red with shed tears, he glared at the girl on the broom, and tried to focus his alcohol ridden brain on her question. The Witch was dead, melted in her fortress of Kiamo Ko by Dorothy, and witnessed by the Witch-hunters, her own guards and Dorothy's companions. If she wasn't real, then she was obviously an alcohol induced hallucination. Thinking about big words seemed to help clear some of the clutter out of his brain, and his eyes went wide.

"My guilty conscience I suppose," he finally answered her, and she cackled with laughter. It wasn't a kind sound.

"And what does the Wonderful Wizard have to feel guilty about. Surely someone as Wonderful as he can't actually be feeling remorse?"

He swallowed bitterly as the ghosts contempt washed over him. Every time it spoke his name, it tasted more like ash in his mouth. Whatever his brain had cooked up, it wasn't going to let him off the hook easily, and he groped for an answer. After all, he had lied to Oz, to his acquaintances and allies, even to his enemies. What was one more lie. He rejected that thought almost as soon as he thought it. He as many things, most notably a total and utter failure as a father, but he was no longer willing to lie to himself.

"Your death," he finally whispered.

"Oh I'm not dead Wizard," she chuckled nastily. "Elphaba Thropp is dead. I'm not even really here." She looked at him, eyes narrow before shrugging her shoulders. "Still, if it would be easier for you to confess your sins to someone else?"

Before the Wizards eyes the girl seemed to shimmer. Her hair went from long and dark to tightly curled and white. Her form expanded and her cloak and dress changed from her usual black to the purest emerald green. Her face changed shape and color, and in mere moments, it wasn't the Wicked Witch sitting on the broom, but Madam Morrible,

"Or would this form suit you better," she asked in Morrible's overly precise manner. Once again the image shifted, and he couldn't stop a tear from rolling down his face as he came face to face with Glinda. Elphaba's well meaning, but very naive roommate whom he had suborned into working for him. An otherwise innocent girl whom he had corrupted and stripped of her innocence by forcing her into a confrontation with her best friend.

"Stop it," he shouted, suddenly overcome. "Please, stop. I beg you." His head dropped onto the rim of the basket, and his body was wracked by sobs, and for a moment that was the only sound besides the ever present hiss of the balloons machinery.

"Then tell me the truth Wizard. Be honest with yourself, the way you never were with the people of Oz. When you hurt thousands of animals, instituted a reign of terror, corrupted every person who came near you, and caused the kind of suffering unseen in Oz in centuries, why is it you feel guilty over Elphaba's death." The question was sharp, and demanded an answer. He raised his tear streaked eyes to the image, now back again to looking like Elphaba.

"Because Elphaba was my daughter," he whispered, and hung his head once more. It was a good thing that he did, because if he hadn't, he might have wondered why his guilty conscience got such a look of profound disbelief and shock on her face, it nearly knocked her off the broom. By the time he looked up again, the shock and surprise was gone, and replaced by anger.

"Don't lie to me," she snapped. "The Wizard of Oz, the great deceiver. Even here with no audience to play no, no one to see you do it, you're still lying."

"I'm not," he said wretchedly. "Glinda figured it out. The bottle that she had, the keepsake of her mothers, was the same as the one I'd used to seduce women over the years. And I recall being in Munchkinland at the right time too. Elphaba wasn't Frexpar's daughter, but mine," his voice trailed off to a whisper. "And I had her killed."

"Great parenting," the specter said sarcastically. "I don't think even Frexspar ever tried to have his own daughter murdered, and he despised Elphaba."

"I know, and I'm sorry," it was a feeble thing to say, and as he took in the suddenly stormy expression on her face, he knew that she realised it to.

"Sorry?" she practically shouted at him. "Sorry?!? You declared her Wicked, you had the Ozzians hunt her down. You ordered a child to try and kill her. Do you know what it was like to have your very flesh burn from your bones?" She demanded, and he scrambled backwards in the basket away from her anger.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, shouting not in anger but in despair. "I wish there really was a Wizard who could grant my hearts desire, then I could go back and do more than just say I'm sorry, but it's all I have. I can't change the past, and there are no other words I can say."

"And what of the future, Wizard?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "All I can do, is try and do better. To be a better man, and not make the same mistakes again."

"And Elphaba?"

"I can't do anything for her now, except try and honor her memory. I'll spend the rest of my life with her death on my heart, and maybe if I do better, one day I'll be forgiven. But nothing I say or do, can ever make it right. That's something I'll have to learn to live with."

There was a long moment of silence, as the two gazed at each other. Then she nodded fractionally. "Good, you're learning. Maybe her death wasn't totally meaningless after all."

He hung his head at her words, and again whispered. "I am so very sorry," but when he looked up, she was gone. He considered reaching for another bottle, but decided against it. He felt marginally better, having admitted the truth, even to himself. He didn't know where the balloon would take him, nor what he would find when he got there, but he would keep his promise and try to be a better man than he had been before.

As the balloon continued to drift onward through the clouds, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, sat in silence and contemplated the future.

-finis-


End file.
